Whicker meets a man with 12 wives

Press, 7 March 1983, Page 19

Whicker meets a man with 12 wives

Television's most travelled man. Alan Whicker, reaches Salt Lake City—Mecca for almost four million Mormons—in his programme. “I Have Only Two Wives—l'm Just a Peanut in This Business." screening on Two at 8.30 tomorrow night. Ever since the pioneers began to build their Holy City in the Salt Lake Valley 130 years ago it has been the headquarters of the world's fastest growing religion: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Two new Mormon chapels open somewhere every day.

The Mormon flair for hard work and business has also created one of the richest international organisations in the world. It controls over 51470 million worth of assets—yet never publishes a balance sheet. The church’s

phenomenal wealth is explained by the tithe (a tenth of his income) every member gives to his temple. This tithe also explains why a dozen dissident sects of polygamists fight for followers so fiercely.

Polygamy, practised by the founding fathers for more than 40 years, is now officially banned by the church, but Whicker reveals that it is still practised in secrecy by between 30.000 and 40.000 fundamentalists still devoted to the principle of “celestial marriage."

One polygamist leader was assassinated during his time in Utah capital by the two young wives of another cult leader, and Whicker penetrates this extraordinary society. He meets a man with 12 wives: Alex Joseph, a former marine and police-

man. has been practising polygamy for seven years and has married 16 times—though four marriages did not work out.

Joseph explains why having 12 wives and 12 mothers-in-law makes for a harmonious household—although he now finds it necessary to carry a gun. and be defended by a small army. The monogamous system is oppressive and a statistical failure with its 85 per cent divorce rate, he maintains. "We have beaten the system. The most obvious truth is that more women than men go for our lifestyle.”

In more orthodox areas. Whicker reports on the evangelical fervour that sends 26.000 Mormon missionaries around the world every year. He discovers that four out of five Mormons trace their

ancestry to Britain—a statistic that can be proved within the remarkable nuclear-blast-proof vault driven 600 feet under a granite mountain. Millions of names are stored on microfilm as the church attempts to record the vital statistics of everyone who has ever lived. He talks to the 82-year-old Mormon leader, Spencer Kimball, revered as a living prophet. He finds an author, Mrs Sandra Tanner, a fierce critic of the church, though she is the great-great-grand-daughter of the second prophet, Brigham Young—who had at least 19 wives and 56 children. Yet whatever the credibility of this extraordinary organisation, its followers emerge as happy, temperate and prosperous in their “City of the Saints.”